A pill is crushed to place it in a more suitable form for ingestion. A pill in powdered form may be readily dispersed in water for drinking or easily mixed with a soft food such as applesauce. A crushed pill may also be more rapidly assimilated through the stomach and into the blood stream than a whole pill. Pills that are typically crushed include aspirin and vitamin pills.
A pharmacist may use a conventional pestle and mortar to crush pills. A standard pestle and mortar includes a club-shaped hand tool for the pestle and a bowl-shaped vessel for the mortar. One of the problems with such a pestle and mortar is that pills may jump out of the mortar as pressure is brought to bear on a pill by the pestle. Another problem is that powder tends to stick to the bowl and may need to be scraped out of the bowl to provide an accurate dosage of medication.
When a standard pestle and mortar is not available, one prior art method of crushing pills utilizes a fluted paper pill cup and a tool such as a hammer. A pill to be crushed is placed in the pill cup, the fluted or ruffled sides of the pills cup are folded inwardly and downwardly to cover and contain the pill, and the folded sides of the pill cup are subsequently hit with a hammer-like tool to crush the pill.
The disadvantages of such a pill crushing technique are numerous. For example, paper pill cups are easily torn or perforated by a hammering process. At the very least, a paper pill cup is disfigured by being folded and hammered, and hence a crushed pill must be transferred for ingestion to a second, new and unused pill cup or to another pill dispenser. Furthermore, as the powdered pill is being transferred to another pill dispenser, the torn, perforated, or disfigured paper sides make it difficult to pour the pill powder from the damaged pill cup. Hence, if the powder falls through the perforations or sticks to the disfigured sides, a patient may receive less than his or her proper dosage of medication. Moreover, it is time consuming to properly wrap a pill in a paper pill cup, find a suitable hammering implement and surface for hammering, delicately hammer the pill to a powder, and transfer the powdered pill medication from the flattened pill cup.
Another prior art method includes the use of a pair of spoons. In such a method, a pill to be crushed is placed in the bowl portion of one of the spoons. The underside of the bowl portion of the second spoon is then placed on top of the pill and pushed into the bowl portion of the first spoon so as to crush the pill.
One problem with the spoon crushing method is a loss of the powdered medication over the shallow sides of the spoons. Another problem is that the handles of the spoons provide awkward leverage for the crushing operation and hence a significant amount of strength may be required to break a pill into granules. A further problem is that a spoon holds a relatively small amount of liquid and hence, if a crushed pill is to be dispersed in liquid for ingestion, the pill powder must be transferred to a second, more suitable dispenser.